Over the next several months the Kosher Goldfish will be spinning out a position on this issue. To coin a phrase :it's complicated."
KG encourages you comments of this journey.
Below are some links to articles for background purposes.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

"On June 13th 2013, the Supreme Court published their ruling[supremecourt.gov] in the case, unanimously finding that isolated but otherwise unmodified genes were products of nature and therefore not patent eligible subject matter. However, the court did find that cDNA, synthetic DNA molecules that contain only the exons of a gene, do involve an inventive step, and thus remain patent eligible. The opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, agreed with Judge Sweet's 2010 argument that the information content of a gene was as important as its chemical structure.

The court's opinion also agreed with a friend of the court brief, filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of the federal government when the case was before the Federal Circuit in 2011 (and again in a modified form when the case went before the Supreme Court in 2013). In this brief, the government took the position that isolated, but otherwise unmodified DNA should not be patent eligible, but that cDNA should be patent eligible. NIH and NHGRI are very pleased with the Supreme Court's ruling in this case, and the removal of serious potential roadblocks that could impede the widespread adoption of genomic medicine."

In June 2013, in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics (No. 12-398), the court unanimously ruled that, "A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated," invalidating Myriad's patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

On March 28, 2016, Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Patrick Leahy, Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar joined the leaders of the House Democratic Task Force on Prescription Drug Pricing urging HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell and NIH Director Francis Collins to hold a meeting “to allow the public to engage in a dialogue with the Department of Health and Human Services and NIH in order to better understand its position on the use of march-in rights to address excessive prices.”